Ashes In Your Wake
by Shadows-Dancing-In-The-Hall
Summary: You've been burning your whole goddamn life. This will be the last one. Then you're done. And all you'll leave is ashes in your wake. Sam's POV on losing Dean and Cas. Slight spoilers up until the end of season 7.


**Wow. No idea where this came from. Probably spawned from my complete refusal to acknowledge finals. I really should get on those...**

**Anyway! This is my first SPN fic. Been watching the show for a long while now (8 months in the fandom is 80 years) and finally found a muse to write a fic! This is just a short oneshot. Hope you like!**

**Please review! This is also my first time doing 2nd POV! :/**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. **

**Warnings: Slight language, mentions of character death**

* * *

**Ashes In Your Wake**

* * *

You should be used to this by now. You really should. How many times have you been here before? Stuck in this same song, just moving on to a different verse? It's an endless repetition. You know all the words. You're a veteran. All you have to do is sing.

_I'm sorry._

_I miss you._

_My fault._

_It hurts. God it hurts._

_It's hell to let you go._

That word. _**Hell. **_People use it without really knowing it's meaning. But you know it. You've _been _there, and back again. And, somehow, _**this**_ is still so much **worse.**

The beer has gone warm in your hand but you no longer care. You don't even know what number it was. Eight? Twelve? Doesn't matter. It doesn't help. You still feel raw and flayed and _burning. _Sweat drips down your neck in rivulets and you think you hear the echo of ghostly laughter.

"_Jeez Sammy! You going through menopause or what?"_

The voice is all wrong, distorted and warped, higher pitched. It's been years since he sounded like that. He sounded much older now, has a lower register. But that's what screaming for forty years will do. You would know. You screamed for a hundred and eighty years and sometimes you still lose your voice, freeze for just a moment at vague memories and flashes of pain from vocal chords long since shredded.

"_Come on dude. Mop up. We gotta meet the vic's family in half an hour."_

That was better. It sounded more like the _now _him. There was no laughter, no teasing. You thought he'd forgotten how, lost the ability under the weight of the world pressing down on his shoulders. But you would never really know for sure now. You haven't seen the crinkles by his eyes in months, _**would never see them again,**_ and already you are forgetting how many there were. You think it's six on the left and seven on the right. You know you're mostly likely wrong.

You're forgetting things now. Like sand through a sieve. Things you took for granted, never thought to memorize, didn't know you _**could **_forget. The sound of his laughter. Or how he mumbled in his sleep. The way he played with the ring on his finger, flashes of dull and dented silver.

And it's not just him either.

You're forgetting the exact shade of a certain pair of blue eyes.

You're forgetting the dry humor, the angle of a confused head tilt.

You're forgetting the taste of home brewed booze and how the word _idjit _felt just as good as _I'm proud of you son. _

You're forgetting what it's like to** be** a son.

You've already forgotten the sound of your father's voice.

And it's been years, centuries, since you remembered what _she _felt like in your arms, the smell of her soft blonde hair as she kissed you before class.

You regret it now.

All these lost details.

But maybe it's for the best; maybe it's better that your brain is punched full of holes, from too many beers, from too many concussions, too many walls that came tumbling dowm.

Maybe now you'll just keep forgetting until there is nothing left. Nothing but expanding lungs and a beating heart, empty air in between. Maybe then it won't hurt. Maybe then you'll be able to close your eyes and **breathe**, a slideshow of images no longer playing through the dark you so desperately wish was peaceful.

When you think about it, which you rarely do, you realize you're already halfway there, halfway to that oblivion. Because you've lost so much, so many pieces of yourself.

You were six months old when you lost the first one, burned to ashes above your bed. Sometimes, you think you can still taste the soot.

But, perhaps, that's because your life has been one big pyre, fires built upon fires, unrelenting.

You were twelve years old when your innocence went up in flames, the second piece of to go, the monsters in the dark, all to real and suddenly there, greedily reaching out to devour those ashes.

You were eighteen when you got on a bus and didn't look back, smoke clogging your throat, stinging your eyes, smoke from burned bridges, smoke in the form of words. _Don't bother coming back Sam._

You were twenty-two when "normal" became nothing but cinders. You don't have to imagine that taste. The charred flavor still lingers on the back of your tongue some days, just as you're waking, tearful brown eyes, bloodied blonde hair, and your name whispered right before heat and flames and screams.

You were twenty-three when you learned you were little better than hell spawn, that it's been poison searing through your veins all your life.

You were twenty-four when the fire that had alway been chasing you finally caught up, became an inferno, and kept burning from there.

Losing _him_ for the first time. Hellhounds and the scalding feel of his blood on your hands.

_I'm sorry._

_I miss you._

_My fault._

_It hurts. God it hurts._

_It's hell to let you go._

Then blood in your mouth, sweet and sickening, tasting of death and embers. It burned you from the inside out. Burned you until you were nothing but a charred husk. Disgusting. Hollow. Crumbling.

You got him back. It wasn't of your doing. After everything he's ever done for you, you couldn't save him. Your failure was a constant blaze beneath your skin.

Soon after, everything fell into your hands—fate, the world, you can save it, _you could—_except you didn't. You dropped the ball. It was too hot to hold and it slid through your fingers, through the earth's crust and pried open a long sealed cage.

_I'm sorry. _

_My fault. _

You set fire to the world, started its burning. You were the fuse in that appliance store-_If I could get us a shot on the Devil... we have to take it_-_**Get goin' now boys**__-tick, tick, boom. _It was only fitting that you put it out in the end.

_It's going to be ok. I got him. _

And then your burning truly started. A hundred and eighty years of it. You decided it was nothing you didn't deserve.

But the rest of it?

Coming back, only to have flames licking at the inside of your skull 24/7? Only to look into the blue eyes of a friend—_should have been soothing, reassuring, it wasn't—_and see nothing but scorching betrayal?

To lose that friend—_**So he's gone?—**_lose your mind—_**Good Morning Vietnam!**__-_find your friend—_**I'm sorry I ever did this to you Sam**__-_lose that mind—_**He's crazy. He'll be better here**__—_but find your own?

You thought it more than you could bear.

You were wrong.

There were some fires yet to burn.

One started by a bullet, a bloodied cap—_Idjits—_and the stark sound of a flat line.

Another, not too long after, with an old silver flask and a searing orange glow, burnt into your retinas for the rest of your life.

And the last one…the most important one.

Fires had always been bright to you. Orange, red, blue, green. Kaleidoscopes and prisms. The most radiant colors you had ever seen. Fire is one of your earliest memories.

But this last fire...it was black, tar, the absence of light and color and it blistered upon exploding, stealing away all the color from your world.

This fire hurt the most. It still hurts. _**It will never stop hurting.**_

Because this fire took the last pieces of you, the last pieces that counted. You are nothing now but ashes, gray and lackluster. You don't have a home—_because home is where the heart is and you don't have one left, it's gone, you know not where—_you don't have a name.

Winchester means nothing. There's none left.

Sam is an heirloom from people long gone.

And…and the other name only belonged to _**him**__..._your brother. Only he got to call you that and he's no longer here. He's no longer anywhere. He went where you can't follow, left you without a map, without a heading, without anyone to turn to because everyone you know is _ashes, ashes, we all fall down. _You're lost and cast a drift at sea. You hope the waters you're drowning in will heal the blisters along your skin.

They don't.

There's a bottle at your lips. You swallow. It tastes like dust, like sulfur, like ash. Your eyes are dry, the water in you all evaporated now. There's a lighter in your hand and a pile of things at your feet: a duffle full of clothes—_some yours, some not—_a handful of dead phones, fake IDs—_in pairs, always in pairs—_an old skin mag—_not yours—_an extra trench coat, beige, that was a gift left ungiven, a ratty old ball cap, and a box full of old, worn cassette tapes.

You don't have bodies to bury, this time around.

But you still have this one last pyre to light.

You should be used to this by now. You really should. How many times have you been here before? Stuck in this same song, just moving on to a different verse? It's an endless repetition. You know all the words. You're a veteran. All you have to do is sing.

_I'm sorry._

_I miss you._

_My fault._

_It hurts. God it hurts._

_It's hell to let you go._

You flick your wrist; a flame leaps to life. You watch it dance, just for a moment, think of all the fires you've ever set, think you've been burning your whole goddamn life.

Think this will be the last one.

Think then you will be done.

You drop the lighter; everything goes up. It's hot but you're used to it, the heat and pain in your chest second nature. When there's nothing left, you walk away. You don't look back. You slide into the car and drive to places you don't know and don't care to care _**about**_.

You drive and leave everything behind, ashes and cinders and _nothing. _

The smell of smoke clings to you, sits in the back of your throat, steals into your lungs.

It never goes away.

In all honesty, you never thought it would.

It's an endless repetition. You know all the words. You're a veteran. All you have to do is sing.

_I'm sorry._

_I miss you._

_My fault._

_It hurts. God it hurts._

_It's hell to let you go._

**Dean. **

**Cas. **

**Bobby.**

_It hurts to let you go._

* * *

_**End**_

* * *

**A/N: Again. No idea where this sprung from but hope you enjoyed! Leave me a few words please! :)**

**Until next time guys!**

**~Shadows**


End file.
